Resolutions

The new year is a full week old, and, if I'm being honest, it hasn't been as productive as I would have liked. The mania of the end of the semester and the holidays has past, and it took all of my motivation and energy with it. In the last few days, I've worked slowly back into some semblance of a schedule and made (glacial) progress.

There are still 51 weeks left in 2018--enough time to get some serious work done.

I'm a in a lot of ways. I like to have a solid idea of what I need to do and the time in which I have to do it. Even when I don't manage to do all of the things that I plan (which is more often than I'd like), have a list, a goal, makes me more productive. So, for my first post of 2018, I thought I'd nail down my plan--my 2018 Writing Resolutions.

This year, I want to

• Finish revisions on CANUS
• Start querying CANUS
• Write the first draft of FETCH
• Get FETCH to first-round readers
• Write and revise a short story for LIBRARIUM
• Attend at least one author event as a vendor
• Attend at least one writing conference
• Read at least fifty books
• Continue regularly attending writing group meetings
• Enter at least one writing competition
• Continue to blog on a (somewhat) regular basis

There are other things I want, too--to land an agent, to sell books, to get a contract for Canus. But with this list, I wanted to focus on the things that are under my control. At the end of the day, I can't make an agent sign me. I can't make a publisher want to take the risk on my work. I can polish my work and make it as clean and professional as I can. I can sit down and do the writing to get a first draft on the page. I can put myself out there at events and take whatever opportunities there are to improve my craft and meet and work with experts.

Last year was a weird one for me as far as writing goes. I wrote a few short pieces, but most of my writing in 2017 was revision. It's going to be strange to drafting again. First drafts are strange beasts no matter the circumstances, but I haven't written a first draft of a novel since 2016. Starting a new project is going to be a learning experience--but it always is.

Letting go of CANUS is going to be strange, too. This manuscript has been my main focus for nearly two years, and the characters have been with me for more than ten. I'll come back to that world and it's characters, but after this round of revisions, I'm going to have to take some time and step away from the project. I love this novel, but it's time to work on other things.

I don't know what my 2018 will hold, and I don't know how successful I'll be, but it's nice to have an actionable plan. Here's hoping the focus on doing what I can will yield results.

Radio Silence

November is my least favorite month of the year. The days get shorter, so my mood loses its buoyancy. End-of-semester fatigue drags me down. A few painful anniversaries steal my energy.

In spite of all that, November is usually my most productive writing month. One of my coping mechanisms is to throw myself into work. This isn't always healthy, necessarily, but it does let me get shit done. And I'm in a position now where I really need to get shit done.

I'm a little behind on my writing goals for the year. I wanted to have my contract novella wrapped up by now. I wanted to be through revisions for the first book of project 2016. I wanted to be well on my way to a completed first draft of my next manuscript. I'm not there yet on any of those goals.

Not being where I want to be always gets my imposter syndrome working overtime, telling me that I'm not where I need to be--that I'll never be where I need to be.

It's easy to forget that I was here last year, too: behind on my goals, floundering to finish the fist draft of a project for myself and to get the work done on projects for other people.

I've managed before. I'll be able to manage again.

But it will mean have to rearrange my priorities.

This blog is important to me. It represents my personal commitment to my writing--a promise that I'm going to treat writing as a job, as a commitment rather than just working "when I feel like it." It's also the longest I've ever blogged with any kind of regularity. This weekly commitment is part of how I've kept my writing work habitual.

I'm at a point right now, though, where I need to use the time I spend on this blog doing other things. I love writing these posts, but I'm not gonna get paid if I don't finish my projects.

So, Practice and Procrastination is going to go silent for a while. Not long--hopefully only through the month of November, but possibly until the end of the semester in the middle of December.

I've still got a couple of interviews and guest posts pending. If those come along during my break, I'll get them posted. Otherwise, I've got to be in the writing/editing cave until I get the work done.

If you start to really miss me during the break, you can always find me elsewhere on the internet. My website will still be updated with appearances and announcements (I've got a couple of projects that should be seeing the light of day in the next few months), I'll pop by the Facebook page and Twitter now and then, and you can find some updates (and lots of cat and dog pictures) on my instagram.

Thanks for sticking with me. See you in December.

Multitasking

Fall is a busy time of year for me. My day jobs pick back up (as does my pay, thankfully) and fills my schedule beyond the stereotypical nine-to-five hours. I'm querying my most recent novel--and, depending on the response to this batch of queries, seeking editorial assistance to give it another polish. This also tends to be the time of year when I get first drafts knocked out--NaNoWriMo is approaching faster than I really want to think about, and I hope to use it to get the first draft of my next project (which I expect will be between 75 and 80 thousand words) out by the end of the year. And I've taken on a couple of extra projects this year: a 5,000 work short for my writing group's anthology, and a 15 to 20 thousand word project for a publisher that I can't officially announce yet that's due in December.

For those that are keeping track, that's about 105 thousand words that I'm meant to get out before the end of the year, and about 25 thousand of those words need to be polished finals. And, again, this is aside from the work, both anticipated and not, that will come from my (three) day jobs.

So, yeah, I'm busy.

I don't mind having a lot of work to do. I get restless and anxious when my time is too empty. Having something to focus on keeps my imagination from spinning down paths that end with me imagining worst-case scenarios for literally every interaction I have with anyone and literally every action I take. But this workload is a lot, even for me, and I'm having to multitask more than I'm used to.

I've mentioned before, both on this blog and in guest posts on other blogs, that I'm on the planner side of the planner/pantser spectrum. This tendency extends beyond my writing. I like to know what I'm going to have to do ahead of time. I'm a to-do list person. I might not physically write down the list, but when I get up in the morning, I walk myself through all of the goals I need to accomplish in that day.

Some insight into planning from V.E. Schwab, whose work I enjoy more and more the longer it sits with me.

What complicates all of this is my physical and mental health. I can't predict when a blinding migraine will keep me sidelined or when my mental condition will bottom out and sap my energy, motivation, and self-worth. Sometimes what should be a doable set of tasks become impossible, and sometimes I have to decide if I'm going to be able to do work to further my writing career or if I'm going to give my limited energy to my day job.

So I try to account for this when I set my goals. I give myself ranges: "I need to add 250 to 1,000 words to this project." "I need to outline this arc or this chapter." "If there's time, I need to edit these pages." This gives me a way out when I've overestimated what I can accomplish but also keeps me doing something. It also lets me build in days when I can rest--a couple of days hitting the top range of my goals gets me ahead of where I need to be and gives me the freedom to take a break. And sometimes those breaks are the best thing I can do for my work.

All of this involves a sort of long-range planning. It's not just about knowing what I can do in a day. It's about knowing what the long-term goal is--whether that's completing a work by a deadline or marking an accomplishment off of the list.

The planning is stressful. But I knew that there would be stress--considerable stress--involved with trying to turn writing from a hobby to a career (even if, as it is now, it has to be a second career). And the stress is worth it in the moments when I'm able to track my own progress. I've taken on so much work this year, but the work is opening doors. Or at least windows. It's worth it.

Out of Hand

Project 2016 continues to be an on-going struggle.

Lately, I've been looking back over the responses to my queries. I still have a couple outstanding, but the responses so far have been nos. A couple of them have been form rejections, but the ones that have had even one non-form line have suggested that I've got something here--there's something about this project that has potential. It's just not quite clicking.

So, this has sent me back to the drawing board, so to speak. I've started another round of revisions on the project. The plan was to make a few tweaks. The structure of the story itself is pretty sound. There were a couple of big things that needed to be done--blank page rewrite on chapter 1, add a chapter in the first act, change a setting in act two. But I figured most of the revisions would be pretty small. Manageable.

As has been the trend with this project, I underestimated.

The thing that I've learned in this past year--the year that I started diving in to writing as a craft and as a pursuit in earnest--is that the writer that I am changes over the course of time.

I wrote the bulk of Evin in 2011. It was absolutely the best book I could write at that time. But, if I sat down with the intent to tell the same story today, I wouldn't end up with the same book. I can even see changes in my writing style between Evin and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," which was written in 2014.

Changes in writing style over three years might not seem so surprising. What's been more striking is the changes I've seen in the way I write in this one year.

I wrote the first draft of the manuscript that I'm currently revising this past November. In the time since I wrote the draft, I've done a couple major revisions, written two short stories for anthologies, and done small writing exercises that were more for practice than anything else. I don't write every day, but I spend several hours a week engaged in my writing--actually drafting or building or outlining a scene in my head (or on my phone, as the case has been a couple of times).

That time spent with the work makes a difference.

When I did the blank-page rewrite of chapter one, the strategies I used were completely different. My focus was in a different place. Certainly, part of this was the fact that I knew the story better this time around, but it's impossible to discount the amount of time I've spent learning about writing and practicing what I learned.

This was great for the chapter rewrite. But it's turned into A Thing as far as the rest of the revisions are concerned.

I'm still working my way through act one. There have been a couple of chapters that I've only tweaked. But there have already been chapters that have moved from the "light revision" category to the "start it over" one.

The writer I am now isn't satisfied with some of what the writer I was before did.

This isn't a problem, really. In the end, the writer I am now is better than the writer I was earlier this year and late last year. Reworking parts of the project is letting me get closer to the story, the world, and the characters as they exist in my head. It's a good thing in the long run.

The theme with the work on project 2016 has been "this is getting out of hand." But I think, really, that's what a project like this should do.

First Impressions

I've been querying again lately. The whole process makes me nervous. Pitching is always an anxious process, but this project is more important to me than anything I've written so far, so the tension is higher and the rejections have a harsher sting. I'm letting this round wrap up, and if nothing comes of it, it'll be time for the next round of revision.

I've got to where I'm pretty comfortable with my query as it stands. It was the basis of the in-person pitch that got a partial request from an agent at ALAWW, and I've had it critiqued by an Writer's House agent via The Manuscript Academy (this is a great resource for authors, by the way--I really recommend checking them out). From the feedback I've had on it, it's pretty solid. And I'm proud of that. It's not easy to distill 82,000 words of novel into a compelling two-paragraph pitch.

But, of course, a good query is only part of finding representation. What I've really been thinking about recently is first pages.

Most of the agents I've got on my query list ask for sample pages. The number of pages varies. One agent asked for the first 50 pages of the manuscript. One only asks for 3. Most want the first 10 pages or the first chapter. No matter how you look at it, there's not a lot of time to make an impression.

I've poured over my first chapter dozens of times. I've moved the starting point. I've sheared description and reframed sections from the character's point of view. I've cut words that create space between the reader and the character. I've played around with starting at a different point in the story entirely to change what the reader knows at the beginning. I'm trying to find a balance between compelling reading, connection to character, and a solid establishing of the world. I've had test readers and critique partners give feedback, and I've applied it--or at least tested it to see if it would work.

The first chapter--the first page--of a book has to do so much. I know what potential the entirety of my story has. I love the narrative and the characters--I have followed them through their journeys.

But a reader doesn't. I have to earn their time. If a reader doesn't like the first page, there's no guaranteeing that they'll read the second page--let alone the second chapter.

I've been reading and listening to podcasts and researching, trying to find advice on how to craft the best first page I can. It's overwhelming. But there are a few things that are common threads in all of the information.

A first page has to introduce the main character. That seems obvious, but it can be more complicated than it sounds. You have to give a sense of who the character is and what they want, and you have to do it without relying the cliche: things like waking up in the morning or getting ready for work (there are always exceptions--some authors can make these intros work, but more often they get boring).

The first page should introduce the conflict, or at least give a sense of it. I tell my students that, by the time I read through the introduction of their papers, I should know what to expect from the rest of the work. In some ways, this same principle applies to a first page. You don't have to telegraph the ending, but there should be something of a feeling that "oh, hey, this thing is probably going to be a problem."

On top of this, the first page should give a sense of the world. What is the structure and how does it inform people's actions and reactions? What are the rules? What is the character's place in all of it?

When you consider that a single page in the standard format-- Times New Roman 12 pt., double spaced, one-inch margins--is only about 250-300 words, you get a sense of what a tall order all of this is.

I've been trying to find ways to be more precise with my language. Some of this is dropping crutch words (the word "that" is a big one for me--also "had"). Some of it is finding ways for sentences to do double duty: to reveal something about the character while simultaneously introducing the conflict or building the world. It's improved my writing overall from where it was when I wrote my first book--even from the way I was writing at the beginning of the year. I don't know that I've "cracked the code," but I certainly have more tools in the toolbox than I did before.

There's still a lot of the process that's out of my control. I have no say over what editors are interested in. I can't control agents' personal preferences. Even an excellent first page won't excite someone who's not into the story idea. But I keep working on the things that I can address, and I'll do what I have to to make my work the best I can.

Cafe Diem

I have an unusual amount of free time right now. The Spring semester ended last week, and Summer term doesn't start for another week. I wrapped up my story for the Mata Hari anthology and even finished up the first round of edits. There aren't any friends or family visiting from out of town at the moment. Where I normally only have a few hours a night to work on my writing, I've now got full days.

It's great, and I'm getting things done. But I've definitely been going a little stir crazy. 

While I love spending time with my cats and dog, and working from home is a great option, considering how anxious I get in even the most benign social situations, even I can only stay at the house so long. By late last week, I needed to get out.

Though I wanted to get out of the house, I didn't want to give up my working time. So, I decided to camp out at a coffee shop for a few hours--a place with lots of windows, an outside seating option, and a staff that wouldn't be concerned about a patron claiming a table for an undetermined length of time, since so much of the traffic is drive through or carry out.

Not pictured: The guy that didn't understand that my headphones meant I was not interested in a conversation.


There are all manner of sneering stereotypes about people that write in cafes. It's not something I've done much of, myself. It's always struck me as a little performative, and my imposter syndrome is generally unwilling to let me perform the role of writer in public--at least, outside of times when I've been invited to. And being a woman in a public place comes with the burden of being assumed to be available for chit chat. Even if you're clearly working on something. And have headphones in. 

But I wanted a change of pace. Not just to look at something other than my house's walls, but also to shake loose some of the blocks I've had. The last few problems that I'm trying to patch up in Project 2016 have proven to be somewhat difficult to untangle. I'd hoped that changing my setting might shake things up enough to reveal new avenues.

And it did help a bit. I've been able to work out some of the major issues, and I have the beginnings of new solutions for most of the rest. I managed a blank-page rewrite of the center of a chapter that's been giving me trouble since the beginning, and now the sequence of events makes more sense. I've been able to trim some fat from a few chapters so that I can add in more important bits of story. I visited the cafe twice last week, and did some good work both times.

But I'm not sure I want to make a habit, however temporary, of cafe writing.

I can see the appeal, in some ways. There is something about a cafe setting that sharpens the brain (or at least my brain). And if you get stuck, there are goodies--never underestimate the power of goodies. If you're the type that gets energized by being around other people, it's a great workspace.

All that said, it doesn't really work for me. I mean, I'm all about tasty baked goods and coffee, but there are some issues. First and most obvious is the expense. Cafe coffee ain't cheap. And, if you're like me, you feel like an asshole sitting somewhere for hours after your coffee and croissant have been consumed so you buy another coffee and croissant.

And then there's the music. I went to a chain cafe, so I expected that I'd hear some pretty generic tunes--whispery-voiced indie singers and soft guitar strumming. I can work through most music, so I thought I'd be fine. The days that I went to the cafe, though, the music of the day was apparently "whales screaming."

Not exactly conducive to work. I guess some people find it relaxing?

And then there are the people. I'm sure others' mileage varies on this, but I work best when I'm allowed to do my own thing without interruptions. For most of my stay at the coffee shop, I was able to do this reasonably well. But now and then, someone tap at my shoulders to ask about the other chair at my table (and then to put it back). And once, someone asked me to move (my body, my laptop, my laptop bag, my coffee and my croissant) to another table. Worst was the man who decided that I must have come out in public to be talked to by a stranger (pro tip: if someone has headphones on, they're not interested in talking--if they're not in danger, leave them alone).

It was a good experiment. I'm glad I did it. But I don't expect that cafe writing is going to somehow become my thing.

Are any of you cafe writers? If you're not, what do you do when you want to write somewhere other than your usual office or writing nook?

Switching Gears

I did more or less what I predicted I would do last week. I took some time off. I played some games and read some books.

But I also spent a lot of time with Project 2016, going over it just one more time before I put it away (for now).

I'm trying to ease back into a normal schedule by doing some day job work today. This hasn't been fun, exactly, but the transition has been smooth. What's weird is the shift I'm having to manage in my writing work.

I made it through the draft of Project 2016. It's time to let it sit and to work on something different. And it's not like I'm lacking other things to work on: a part from two more books set in the same universe as Project 2016, I've got a short story with an April deadline that's only about halfway done.

I've got a pretty clear plan of what I've got to do. The story has to come next. I've done the outline and some of the work. Also, you know, there's an actual deadline by which a publisher wants it. It's super clear what I need to do.

But I'm having a hard time pulling myself out of the world of Project 2016 to focus on a different world and a different set of characters. It's not that I don't like the story--I was jazzed enough about it to successfully pitch it, and I wrote the first half of it pretty quickly. It's a good story. Or it has the potential to be, at least.

The problem--such as it is; I imagine I'll work my way out of this funk soon enough--might be that I've spent so much time in the Project 2016 universe. It's been more than a year since I started revamping the project. I've taken breaks here and there, but it's been most of what I've written in the past year. And that universe and those characters are going to be at the center of my next two major projects. Project 2016 lives in every crevice of my brain all of the time. Shifting my focus, even for a month, to work on something totally unrelated is daunting.

I can do it. I've done it before. And, to be fair, I need to shake things up--to get away from the big project for a while so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes.

It's always rough to move to something new after so much time devoted to a project. I'm not so good at making the shift, but I'll manage.

Lazy

This week, I plan to be lazy.

Lazy is relative. I'll still be working--both paid labor at the day job and the unpaid (and seemingly unending) labor of polishing the manuscript. But I'm going to take it easier than usual.

Two of the three schools that I work for are on Spring Break this week. I have maybe two hours worth of prep work to do, rather than the usual five or six. There's no writers' group meeting this week. My spouse doesn't have a show this coming weekend. In comparison to my usual schedule, this week is practically a vacation. I plan to make the most of it.

I'm not very good at the whole work-life balance thing. When I'm describing this characteristic of mine in job interviews, I usually call it "being self-motivated." In the middle of the week, when I'm lamenting the fact that I have to teach a six-class course load to live comfortably, I call it "desperation." I don't mind work. I understand that achieving goals requires a combination of sweat and kismet. But it's hard to keep the pace that I have to.

So, I'm trying to actually take some time from working this week. I've set aside two books that I want to read (I'm about a quarter of the way through the first). I'm checking out times for movie showings. I've figured out where I put my copies of the Mass Effect trilogy so that I'm ready to go when the next installment comes out (there's a lady Turian in the trailer--I'm already in love).

I'm probably being too optimistic with my leisure plans. I've met me. I'll likely find some way to spend hours grading or obsessively scrolling through my work email. I know I won't be able to leave the manuscript be this week. And I still have a project due in April that's not quite done.

But I'm going to take a comparative break. I'm going to be lazy.

And it's going to be awesome.

ALAWW

Normally my Fridays are spent in my office grading papers, doing course prep, meeting with students, and doing other generic academic grunt work.

But this week I took a day off--from academic work, at least.

As I mentioned in last week's post, I signed up for the Alabama Writing Workshop. The meeting was Friday, so I rescheduled my office hours and, instead of spending the day on campus, I spent it at a hotel in Birmingham, schmoozing with other writers and meeting industry professionals.

I'm a nervous person in general. My anxiety brain never stops coming up with potential scenarios for disaster--which can be great for writing, but is considerably less great when it comes to trying to make a good first impression. I spent a pretty significant portion of the day reminding myself that the goal was to learn more and if that was all I accomplished that would be a victory. I also spent a pretty significant portion of the day reminding myself that I had to do things like breathe and blink and maybe drink some water. My hands shook when I met new people. I tripped over my words and stuttered.

It was awesome.

As someone who's spent the better part of fifteen years trying to make something of my ambitions to write professionally and to get my stories out into the world, I went in with a solid body of background knowledge. I knew about some of the resources mention (I've actually plugged some of them in different blog posts--I'll go back through and make a full list to post soon). I had done a fair bit of the recommended prep work. But even at that, hearing the professionals name check the resources I've been using was encouraging. I frequently feel--and I imagine other writers in positions similar to mine also feel--like I'm treading water. Now, though, I've got a sense that I'm at least treading the right water.

The seminars were led by agents and editors. They dealt with topic ranging from seeking out representation for work, improving writing, making use of social media, and what happens after a book deal is signed. It was a ton of information, and I took pages of notes (and, thankfully, the speakers provided outlines and resources for their talks, so I should be able to review and find what I inevitably missed). And those were just the talks.

The session that met right after lunch was, to me, one of the most informative. It wasn't so much a talk as it was a review. Attendees were told they could bring copies of their first page (sans names, of course) and the panel of agents would read through them--or parts of them--and give critiques. Essentially, the panel members would indicate when a page lost them, when they'd stop reading. My page didn't get read (and I'm actually glad it didn't since this panel was before my scheduled pitching time), but the issues that were pointed out in the pages that were read gave me some insight into how to improve mine.

It was a fantastic insight into how quickly some of these decisions can get made--how vital a strong first page is. It was also an opportunity to learn where the mileage varied for the specific agents on the panel. When they found something that didn't work, they said why. Sometimes it was an issue with the structure, but sometimes it was more subjective. And when panel members disagreed, they said so and explained why.

To me, though, valuable as all of the sessions were, the best part was meeting in-person for a one-on-one session with an agent.

The one-on-one was an addition to the conference--an extra event with an extra fee, and each instance of the fee got one sit-down with one agent. This was another instance where my background research came in handy--adjunct pay isn't great, so I only had enough funds to sit down with one agent. I reviewed the list, checked their websites and MSWL and Publisher's Marketplace (and availability--I registered last minute, so some slots were sold out). The sit-down was a ten-minute conversation, an opportunity to do a quick elevator pitch of the project and to ask and answer questions.

I spent the whole day nervous, but this is where the butterflies got out of hand. I managed--I made it through my pitch without too much word vomit. My hands (and voice) shook the whole time, but not so much that I couldn't be understood. I lost the thread of what I was saying for a second, but I got back on track, and the conversation didn't seem to suffer for it. The agent that I spoke with really did more than politeness demanded to ease my nerves (seriously, she was the nicest person I talked to through the conference--which made pitching that much more pleasant).

I didn't walk away with an offer of representation or a full manuscript request--I didn't expect to. But I did get an invitation to send a sample of Project 2016. And, after my pitch, she asked about other projects related to Project 2016 (some of the things I said in my pitch, she said, suggested that there were more stories)--which she asked for brief pitches for in my submission packet. There are never any guarantees--she liked the idea of the story, but it's still totally possible that my writing style won't be what she's looking for or that the draft flat-out isn't strong enough. But I am so glad--so glad--that I took the chance to talk to her face to face about the project.

It's the most promising lead that I've got so far, and even if it doesn't work out, I know where the strengths and weaknesses of my pitch are better now than ever before. I've got new tools to use as I keep working.

I won't be able to do many of these conferences--again, adjunct pay leaves a lot to be desired--but if I have the chance to go to another, I think I will. If you've been working on a project and are considering a conference, I hope you go. Worst case scenario, you still win--you still come out with more than you had when you went in.

Writers' Conference

This week, I took a big step in furthering my writing career.

I signed up for my first writers' conference.

I've been to conventions before, of course, places where indie authors host panels on different aspects of writing and publishing (self-publishing and small press publishing, usually) and sell their wares.

These experiences have certainly been valuable, but more often than not, the people I've met at conventions are in the same place I am. They've been writing for years. They've sold a few pieces to presses of various sizes, usually on the smaller end of the spectrum. They aren't agented, usually--in fact, I think I've only met one author with an agent at a convention. I've made some good connections at these events, and they're how I first heard of my two current publishers.

But as far as making the transition from being an indie author selling to small presses to deals with larger publishers that won't review a submission from an unagented author, conventions haven't given me what I need.

I've written in the past about my attempts to get an agent so far, where my struggles and successes have been and what I've learned from the process. I've been largely self-educating through this process. I look up articles on how to pitch, I dig through lists of agents trying to find ones who represent my genre and who sound like they might be on the same wavelength as I am. I peruse Manuscript Wish List and I keep up with the Writer's Digest blog looking for new ideas of people to query and tips on refining my pitches.

I've been doing what I can, but what I really want, what I think I need, is guidance. A chance to talk with the people on the other end--to the agents and editors I'm trying to get my work in front of. I want a chance to hear what they themselves have to say and to ask questions, maybe even to sit one-on-one and talk about my pitch, specifically.

There are meetings all over the country that offer opportunities like this--writers' conferences (conferences, not conventions--one's focused more on the craft where the other is a little more sales and entertainment oriented) and writers' workshops hosted by agents and editors that offer panels on querying and critiques and short sit-downs with agents.

But these events tend to end up where there are communities to support them--which tends to translate to larger cities or places that tend to draw a lot of tourists and conventions (and so tend to have better infrastructure for dealing with the influx of people). Which is fine.

Unless you can't afford to travel and live in places that aren't exactly hot spots for convention hosting. Most of these meetings have been out of my price range and too far out of town for me to reasonably make the trip.

So I was pretty excited when the Alabama Writers Workshop was announced. It's close enough to me that I can get to it and, because it's a slightly smaller meeting, it's price tag isn't as big. And it happened to coincide with a pay increase (also a workload increase, but that's another story).

I signed up. I paid my registration fee. I dropped the extra money to get a one-on-one with one of the agents that will be there. Now I've got a little less than a week to iron out my verbal pitch, print copies of my first page for review, do more background research on the agent I'm meeting, and figure out what specific questions I'm going to focus on finding answers to.

I'm not anticipating that I'll walk out of the convention next week with a manuscript request (though wouldn't that be awesome?). But I hope I'll at least leave with a better sense of where I am and what work I need to do to get my project out into the world at the level that I want. I don't know what exactly the experience will bring, but I'm looking forward to it.

And I imagine I'll tell you all about it next week.

The Who and the What

There are a million concerns that come up when I'm writing a story--pacing, development, wording, and on and on. But there are two that come first, two concerns that are the crux of the process.

Character and plot. Or, the who and the what.

Who is my story about? What happens in the story? These are the first two questions I have to find answers to when I start work on a new project. And they seem obvious. I can't tell a story unless I know whose story I'm telling. And if I don't know what happens, then I just have characters hanging around with no particular aim.

These are basic, bare-bones questions. The should be simple.

But I have a hard time answering both. I can come up with characters that live and breathe. Or I can come up with a fully-articulated plot. But I run into problems when I try to do both.

With Evin, the plot came first. I had the story worked out from beginning to end. I knew all the moving pieces of what would happen. But the characters were vague--ideas more than living participants for the story. They sounded the same. None of them had specific motivations beyond "do what the plot requires we do." I didn't have moments where I wondered what the point of a particular chapter was. I knew what beats had to be hit, what set pieces there had to be in each segment. I knew what scenes I needed.

But the human element was missing.

I did something around 5 drafts of Evin before it got to where it is now. There was a lot that was improved on between the first draft and the published draft. The voices are more specific. The motivations are somewhat clearer. But when I look at the book, I'm not satisfied.

With Project 2016, the situation was largely opposite. The characters came first, a team of them with specific backgrounds and desires and voices. I knew who these people were, and I knew them completely--and almost immediately. Not just how to make them sound different on the page, but what made them tick. Why would this person say these words? Why is this one the one that has to take the risk or do the task? Why does this one react so strongly to a particular situation? I could drop these characters into almost any scenario and know how they would interpret it. These characters aren't vague--they live and breathe.

But I was never completely sure what to do with them.

Evin's plot never changed during the process. The journey, the goal--I knew what they were from the beginning.

With Project 2016, I came up with a potential conflict and explored. I got a skeletal plot. I let it sit for years before coming back and refining it--fleshing out the conflict and figuring out some scenes that the characters' personalities would dictate. And then it wasn't enough.

I want people to connect with these characters--and to get that to happen, I figured out that the plot couldn't start where I thought it did. And that it might need to continue after I thought it would end.

I can't speak to which process is the better one for me in the long run. I personally feel more connected to Project 2016 than to Evin, but that could just be because it's the current project. Or I could be happier with it because I've learned new tools and tricks since I did the work on Evin, and it might have less to do with the process than with the level of experience. All I do know is that I have to get to a point where the what and the who are both fully formed. I can't rely solely on an interesting plot or solely on complete characters to compel a reader to stick with me.

For my readers who are writers, where do you start with a new project? What parts come first? How do you make sure you're giving each piece the best you can offer?

The Wind Up

Right now, pitching is my life.

I'm still working on revisions for bits and pieces of what was formerly Project 2016 (I guess I'll need to give it a new name now), but I've by and large moved on to the querying process. For now, at least. Depending on how this round of submissions goes, I might end up back at the drawing board.

Queries are among the hardest things to write (the hardest thing is the synopsis, but that's a post for another day). It's hard to take 75,000 to 85,000 words and boil it down to a single eye-catching paragraph. You've got to introduce the protagonists. You've got to lay out the stakes. You've got to convince the agent/editor/publisher that your story is something special--something worth the financial risk. But you can't give away the ending. You can't reveal the twists and turns. Your Chekov's Gunsmen and their guns have to stay concealed.

The idea is that your query should read rather like the back cover copy you see on the books you find in a bookstore. Just enough information to set up a reader's expectations and to pique their interest without tilting the bean can too far.

This has been sort of a trial and error process for me. The early queries for Evin were terrible. As far as queries to agents went, I don't think I ever made it out of the slush pile. The rejections that I got were polite, but they were form letters.

By the time I sent a query to Evin's publisher, Foundations Books, I had figured out some of my missteps. I wouldn't call the final query I sent out sparkling--at least not by the standards I would use to judge myself today, nearly a year after the fact--but it was successful.

The queries for Delphinus have been considerably better. I've still gotten rejections, but they've been more helpful--more specific. Whatever I've done in the query has been enough to get people to read through the sample pages and respond directly to what they've seen there.

I'm still working on getting better at my written pitches in the only way that I know how: by pitching projects. By the time this post goes up (I'm writing in advance--part of my get-back-on-track-time-management plan), I should have heard back on the latest one. This time, I'm proposing the story I want to write to a publisher. It seems like that should be easier, since you haven't written a work that's locked you in to anything yet, but it was just as frustrating and complicated as any I've written.

And all of this is without even getting into spoken pitches--so-called elevator pitches, because they ideally take no longer to run through than a short elevator ride. Narrowing down to a paragraph or so is difficult. Trying to sum up a novel in a few sentences (I think something like 35 words is about the length people tend to shoot for) is Herculean. I don't yet have a strategy for making these better--most of my talking about my projects is me waving my arms and word-vomming at my writing group partner. It's possible that the Twitter Pitch Parties that happen every few months might be the best tool for this--maybe I'll try tooling around with that a little.

Pitching's part of the process that I'm not great at (though, honestly, there are times when I'm not particularly good at any parts of the process), but I'm hoping that through time and effort, I'll improve. The evidence seems to point that way so far. Until I  make it, I'll just consider these earlier efforts the wind up.

Wrap It Up

Well, 2016 was certainly a hell of a ride.

In a lot of ways, this past year was not a great one for me. I lost a great many idols and inspirations. I saw the appalling reversal of trends that I thought couldn't help but continue to march forward. I went through a semester of teaching that turned out to be more complicated and difficult than the last few have been. I had to find ways to cope with anxiety and depression without the aid of the healthcare system--which frequently meant not coping very well at all.

Let's just say it's been a rough one.

But, in spite of all of that, 2016 might have been the best year ever as far as my writing is concerned.

I don't say that to romanticize suffering in the way that some might. Sure, struggle can sometimes lead to the creation of great art, but it's really hard to create art when you're so deep in a pit of depression that a managing to get up and get a shower feels like a feat worthy of an Olympic medal. This glamorized image of the suffering artist is a problem in a lot of ways, and I could go one about the issues for hours, but that's for another day. What I mean is that, despite (despite and not because of) the difficulties I faced this year, I still managed to do.

I've mentioned before that one of my (many) stumbling blocks with writing has been momentum. I'll come up with an idea, steam ahead for a while, and then lose interest or stop making the time to work. Projects not only got moved to the back burner, but taken off of the stove all together and shoved into the back corner of the freezer.

That didn't happen this year. I committed to setting aside time for my writing work. I got shit done, and it felt pretty glorious. When I look at the list of achievements for 2016, it's actually pretty impressive.

1. I finished the polishes on Evin
2. Evin got published--my first ever published novel
3. Had semi-regular writing group meetings
4. I re-outlined and redrafted Delphinus
5. And outlined and drafted its prequel
6. I finished two rounds of revisions on Delphinus
7. According to my Magic Spreadsheet count, I wrote almost 150,000 words
8. I managed to keep up with this blog for most of the year (and I'm notoriously bad about abandoning blogs)

And most of that was in the back half of the year. 

So, yeah. As far as writing goes, 2016 was one for the books. But I don't want to rest on my laurels. I don't want this to be the one productive year that I get.

I've been thinking about what I want for my writing career, such as it is, and what I can do in 2017 to keep the momentum and to get closer to my dreams for my writing.

I'm compiling a list of goals for this year. I'm sure the list will change as the months go by, but I wanted to share some of what I plan to do to keep myself on track this year. Maybe these goals are relevant to you, too.

1. Finish the next round of edits for Delphinus and send it back out to test readers
2. Attend at least one writing conference and try to do some in-person pitching
3. Continue writing group meetings and participate in more local writer events
4. Do author events--a couple of signings are already in the works, but I want to make it to at least one convention in 2017 as well
5. Send out more queries in batches of four. Review the manuscript and responses after rejections to determine if there are patterns in how agents/editors are responding
6. Do round one revisions on the prequel and get it sent to beta readers
7. Outline trilogy's third book
8. Draft trilogy's third book
9. Finish drafts of two short stories
10. Continue regular blog posts

I've got my work cut out for me this year, but I've also already made progress on a few of these goals.

As difficult as 2016 was, it was the turning of a new leaf for me as far as my writing goes. I have high hopes for 2017.

In the meantime, I have work to do.

Happy New Year.
 

The "It" Factor

By the time I had figured out that Project 2016 was part of a larger project, I had already sent out a handful of queries. Most of them had gotten responses before I went back to work, but a couple were still outstanding.

I went ahead and got back to writing because, for one thing, I needed to keep myself busy and stay in the habit of working and, for another, I didn't want to hang all my hopes on this version of Project 2016 being the one that got picked up.

It's been long enough that I'd actually forgotten about all but one outstanding query (as an aside, those auto-response receipts are a godsend as far as keeping up with who has what and where). I've been working on other things, and the emails I sent back in early October are fuzzy.

So I was surprised this week when I found a response from an agent in my email.

Before anyone gets too excited, the email wasn't a manuscript request. It was a rejection. The sixth for this project so far.

I'm not generally bothered by rejections. What makes good fiction is pretty subjective, and sometimes your work just isn't someone's style. Frankly, you don't want someone who isn't one hundred percent about your work to represent it. And I'm not bothered by the number of rejections. Harry Potter was famously rejected a dozen times before it found a home. All manner of famous authors have seen rejections--Orwell, Faulkner, Stein, L'Engle, Alcott, Christie, Joyce--the list goes on. I've heard authors talk about seeing upwards of 50 rejections before finding the right match (though, I'll admit--I'm not sure I'd still be unbothered by rejections at that point).

The responses I've received from the people I've queried, thought they haven't been what I wanted, have all been kind and helpful. None of them have made me feel like I'm wasting my time with this project. In fact, from the way some of the rejections have been worded, I think I might have come pretty close to success once or twice--phrases like "excited by the query" and "interested in the premise," stuff that suggests that, if nothing else, there was something that gave the reader pause or piqued interest.

And that's great--it's really, really great. It means there's something in the story that people are into.

But it's also so frustrating that I want to pull my hair out.

In addition to these more promising statements, the emails I've gotten have mostly included some variation of "I didn't fall in love with it the way I need to to represent it."

Again, in the long run, that's a good thing for me to know. Whoever is going to champion my book needs to love it at least as much as I do. If someone can't reach that level of enthusiasm, they won't be able to fight for it. And my work not being someone's cup of tea is no big thing--there are plenty of books that are great that I'm just not that into. It happens.

None of this experience is abnormal. But it has left me asking questions.

What's the "it" factor? What makes someone fall in love with a book? What might my book be missing?

Obviously, there's not a hard-and-fast answer to any of those questions. What makes a person fall in love with a book is going to depend on the reader. The "it" factor can be anything from a particularly compelling character to a detailed and expansive world with thorough lore, to a timely conflict or the introduction of a fascinating piece of technology. My book may not be missing anything--or it may be missing a lot.

The process is a roller coaster. People have joked that being an artist is simultaneously feeling absolute narcissism and crippling self-doubt. That doesn't seem far off the mark. This question of what makes people fall in love with a book (which is really me asking "why aren't people falling in love with my book?" if I'm being honest) has got me on a bit of a downswing. But it's temporary. It always is. And at least I know that there is something worth keeping in this project.

I've still got two queries out. I have no idea what to expect from them, but I do have a plan for what I need to do next, which is about the best I can ask for.

I'll be taking next week off from the blog for the holiday. The blog will be back January 1 with a 2016 recap and, if there's news, updates.

Happy holidays, folks. Thanks for reading.

Let it Simmer

I'm about five days removed from finishing my latest draft.

The whole process for Project 2016/Delphinus Trilogy has been, to put it lightly, a total freaking mess. Originally, I was supposed to be sending out queries around this time. Maybe taking a break from submissions to do another pass through the draft just to make doubly sure that everything's polished as well as I can get it.

Instead, the notion that my stand-alone was actually a trilogy hit, and now I'm back towards the beginning of the process. It's not quite square one, but it's pretty close.

Anyway, I've made it over the first big hurdle. Draft one of the first book is finished. That is a victory, though it can be difficult to feel that way.

This first draft is ugly. Like, really ugly. I'm not going to be short of things to work on when it comes time to revise. Off the top of my head, I know a character has to be dropped, a couple of relationships need more fleshing out, there are some alterations that need to be made to some of the opening scenes to work in a little more world building, and the dialogue and body language in the back end of the draft (around the part where I started getting tired like a kid cramming to finish a paper the night before it's due) need to be overhauled.

That's just the stuff that I know needs work.

One of the pitfalls of writing, particularly of writing so much of a story in so short a time, is that it can, if you'll pardon the cliche, hard to see the forest for the trees.

I'm so in this story. I've been building the greater universe for it for a decade, and I've been spending literal hours every day piecing this specific draft together for over a month. The world and its characters are ever-present. Bits of their history and their conversations wake me up in the morning and keep me up at night.

Part of the reason that beta readers are so important is that at some point, a writer needs someone who hasn't had the entire world of the story living in their head. I'm not quite at the point where I'm ready for an outside set of eyes to look at the story, but getting some distance from the story is still the plan.

I want to do a round of revisions on my own before I pass the draft on to anyone else. But I'm really not in the right place to do it--it's all too fresh, and there are sure to be important gaps and flaws that I'll miss.

So I'm letting the draft simmer. I'm taking a couple weeks to let the story sit. I'm not fiddling with or looking at the draft until the 20th. By then, I should have a clearer sense of what it needs.

In the meantime, I'm doing other work. I've got a short story for an upcoming anthology that I need to write, a second short story that I hope to wrap up and shop around. There should be enough to keep me occupied until it's time to dive back in.

And maybe by the time I look at the draft again, I'll feel a little better about it, too. Maybe a little simmering is just what it needs.

NaNoWriMo Plus

Ho boy, what a month.

For those that maybe missed the memo, I spent the month of November (and the last ten days of October) participating in National Novel Writing Month 2016. The goal NaNoWriMo official goal is to write a 50,000 word novel (or, for most folks, 50,000 of a novel) during the month of November. This shakes out to writing about 1,667 words a day. Tough, but doable, provided you make the time to do the work.

I did things a little differently. In the course of working on Project 2016, it expanded into a trilogy. I decided to use NaNoWriMo to pin down a first draft for the first third of the project. (In case there's still confusion: Project 2016 is not only suddenly a trilogy; it's a trilogy that I started writing out of order. The whole process has been sorta a mess--glorious, but a mess.) Based on my outline, I knew that 50,000 words wouldn't complete the draft, so I gave myself a different goal and a different timeline. I started work around October 20 with the idea that it would take about 75,000 words to complete the draft.

I found out that I was wrong pretty quickly.

By November 10 or 11, it was pretty clear that 75,000 words was an underestimation. The trend for Project 2016 seems to continue to be "This is more story than I thought it would be." I refigured for 80,000--which put me at an average of 2000 words a day.

Actual image of me around November 15

 

Still doable. A bit much, when balanced with two day jobs and a few days of migraines that left me completely sidelined.

Beyond the issues of not-enough-hours-in-the-day, other difficulties presented themselves. I've written before about imposter syndrome and how I frequently feel like I'm not a writer--or in the least like I'm not a good one. Nothing brings those feelings of inadequacy to the fore like trying to put together a first draft on a deadline. 

 

First drafts are bad enough. They're messy and half-formed and full of cliches and redundancies and really repetitive body language (really, AJ, you're gonna shrug again? Can't think of anything else to do?). First drafts written under a time constraint--even a self-imposed one like NaNoWriMo--feel a little bit like falling down a flight of stairs. You're going to make it to the end goal eventually, but it's going to be ugly and a few things are going to be knocked out of place or broken. I spent most of my forty days of writing battling to keep from giving up, reminding myself that this story is worth telling. I didn't always believe myself, and there are some days where, when I look back on the work I did, it shows.

 

But I made it through--or close enough. I made it to the goal of 80,000 words at 12:05 AM on December 1, technically five minutes after the end of NaNoWriMo. I counted that as a victory, whatever the official timing might say. 

 

The problem was, 80,000 words didn't finish the draft either.

 

As a point of reference, Evin runs about 85,000 words, so it's not as though a story spinning out this long is unheard of for me. But it did feel like the finish line kept moving on me, and that got frustrating pretty quickly.

 

I finished the draft yesterday. In total, it's just over 85,000 words. Some of this won't make it to the next draft--I already know that one character and their scenes are going to be dropped, and I've got a few ideas on how to do some streamlining. But for now, I'm going to let it sit. I've got a couple of short projects to wrap up, and I want to outline the third book in the trilogy that is Project 2016.

 

The draft is longer than I thought. It took longer than I thought, and it's ugly and messy. But it's done, and that in and of itself is a victory.

 

Did any of you do NaNoWriMo this year? Did you meet your goals? Tell me about it in the comments.

WriMo-ish

This has sort of been a year for me doing things I had said I wasn't going to do.

I wasn't going to start another project this year. (Technically I didn't I guess, I just expanded an already in progress project--but the outcome is the same. I'm starting work on another first draft.)

I wasn't going to write a series.

I wasn't going to do NaNoWriMo.

NaNoWriMo, for those that are unfamiliar, is National Novel Writing Month. It is, as the name implies, a month-long writing event. The goal is to write a 50,000 word novel draft in the 30 days of the month of November.

There are all manner of thinkpieces out there about NaNoWriMo from writers of all stripes and all levels of experience. The event has its supporters and detractors, and both groups are pretty vocal.

At the risk of making a generalization, I have noticed a trend in the articles that I have read regarding the merit (or lack thereof) of NaNoWriMo: professional writers--by which I mean writers for whom money from writing is either all or the bulk of their income--seem to think less fondly of NaNoWriMo than amateurs. 

This makes sense, I guess. The market has changed to the point where anyone with sufficient determination could throw 50,000 words on a page in November and self-publish their book in December or January. Even though most of these self-published novels won't see sales high enough to be threats to sales for authors with traditional contracts at bigger publishers, there is something uncomfortable about the idea of someone doing in a month, and seemingly on a whim, what can take literal years to do the "right" way. And having to fight for an agent or editor's attention for a work you might have spent months or years on against someone's thirty-day draft doesn't seem fair.

Beyond this, there are some more practical concerns. Marketable manuscripts usually run closer to 70,000 words than 50,000, so even if the writing on the November draft is perfect, it's probably not a complete novel--not for a publisher, anyway. And, if we're being honest, the writing on the November draft won't be perfect--a first draft never is.

You don't really have a true novel at the end of NaNoWriMo. You may have a great start, but you don't have a finished project. Not even close.

And, for me, I think that's the key. 

I am pro-NaNoWriMo. I can understand the frustrations, and I would hate to be an editor or agent on December 1 when I imagine hundreds or thousands of queries for 50,000 word rough drafts come to the slush pile, but I frankly think the benefits of this event are pretty great. Granted, my opinion isn't unbiased--most of the first draft of Evin was written during NaNoWriMo in 2011.

Sometimes, at least for me, getting the words on the freaking page is the most difficult part of a draft. I'm a perfectionist--at least when it comes to my writing. When it comes to revisions and editing, that's great, but it's not so great for the first draft. I want the words to be perfect--and of course they never are--so I keep trying to "get them right" before I get them on the page. Which generally translates to me never getting the words on the page. The looming deadline--50,000 words by December 1--helps serves as motivation. When I did NaNoWriMo with Evin, I didn't have a perfect draft by any means, but I had words on a page, and that's something I can work with.

And there's a community with NaNoWriMo. If you sign up on the official site, you can select your region and connect with other writers near you--on forums or in person (in public, well-lit places and in groups, naturally). This gives writers the chance to commiserate about their struggles, and struggles in a situation like this are inevitable, and provides a sounding board for ideas. Writing can be lonely under the best of circumstances. The marathon writing sessions that getting 50,000 words in 30 days requires can be even more isolating. ("Sorry, I can't go out tonight, I have to find some way to ad 1,600 words to a story that I have NO IDEA where it's going." "Sorry, I accidentally went to bed on time last night, so I'm 400 words behind.") This option to connect with other writers in your region--or around the nation--is a huge boon.

Honestly, my stance on all things writing is pretty much "do whatever lets you get the work done." If NaNoWriMo lets you finish a draft, then that is great (so long as you're realistic--it's not a finished product; it's a draft, and that is honestly still a crazy impressive achievement). NaNoWriMo has worked for me in the past. I'm hoping it'll work again.

I guess this post is basically my long way of saying that I'm going to be a NaNoWriMo participant this year. Since Project 2016 has expanded to a trilogy, I'm going to try to use the next month to pin down as much of the first draft of the first book as I can. I'm actually starting early (it's going to be considerably more than 50,000 words, so I'm giving myself more than 30 days).

What all of this means as far as the blog is concerned is that the blog will not be updating on the usual once weekly schedule. How often I post will depend on my where wordcount is. There'll be at least one post in the month of November, though I can't promise any more than that. If you're interested in keeping up with how things are progressing, check out my author Facebook page and/or my Twitter, where I'll be posting periodic updates.

Good luck to my fellow NaNos. See you in December.

Partners

  I've never really bought into the idea of the solitary writer, sitting alone in a room pounding out page after page with no input from anyone else. I'm sure this is probably pretty close to how it works for some folks, but my process has never reflected this narrative.

 True, most of the actual writing is done on my own, more or less. I share a house with two other people and with two cats, so an actual private writing space is sort of a dizzy daydream, but the getting-the-words-on-the-page part happens when I'm allowed to work relatively uninterrupted. But I can't just thrown an idea at the page. The early stages of the process--of my process, at least--are things that I can't do on my own.

 Part of a text message conversation with my writing group partner.

I've written about my writing group partner before. She's generally the first set of eyes for any project that I write, and she's usually the person that I send the "final" draft to before I start querying. But beyond that, she's one of the first sounding boards for my ideas.

When asked if I'm a planner or a pantser, I usually say planner. I've discussed my outlines on here before, and even shared a picture of one on the Facebook page. And yeah, by the time I'm in a draft, I have a pretty solid plan. But, if I'm telling the truth, the beginning of a project is all pantsing. Every bit of it.

The earliest stages of a project mainly consist of throwing ideas at the wall and seeing if anything sticks. And this is where my writing group partner comes in.

In the past couple of weeks, I've sent probably two or three times my usual number of text messages. It's not unusual for she and I to send each other updates, especially when our schedules don't really allow for us to meet in person. But usually it's only one or two texts--maybe an update on where we are in the work or a question about when we're going to meet next. Lately, I've been sending little tidbits about characters or the world or relationships almost as quickly as I think of them.

It started with a message about not being ready to move on to new characters and a new world after finishing Project 2016 (which I guess I could call by its title now, since I sorta revealed it above).

"I think I'm too invested in my own story," I typed.

"You're never too invested in your own work," she replied.

I might have started brainstorming my way through the extra bits of Project 2016--which, by the way, is now a trilogy instead of a single book--on my own, but something about getting tacit permission from my writing partner sparked the fire further.

I started the first step of a new project--writing down literally everything I know about the story, world, and characters. And my writing partner has been my sounding board through the whole thing. 

"I'm thinking that I'll have to go back and tell earlier parts of the story."

"I'm not sure where the narrative for the first book is going to start, but I think I know where it ends."

"I've figured out who my narrators are."

 Technically, I guess I could have just written down these ideas without running them by anyone--it's never been part of our deal that we have to discuss every step of a project. I could have closed myself off and just started writing.

But there's something about sharing an idea with someone that makes you--or at least makes me--get more excited about it. 

For me, writing is always going to be a collaborative effort. The feeling of starting off with someone on my side makes the rest of the process less intimidating.